


It Feels Like Christmas (Sort of)

by chasingyellow



Series: Alone (Together) [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, Anxiety, Christmas, Damian is actually a softie, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Deserves Better, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason is not very okay, Lazarus Pit (DCU), Lazarus Pit Madness, Panic Attacks, Pizza, and having feelings, but mostly Jason being confused, but mostly on the inside, but pizza makes things better occasionally, but we love him anyway, hurt jason, sad/sweet, someone give him a hug pleaseeee, which he doesn't like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingyellow/pseuds/chasingyellow
Summary: It all started with the demon brat.Figures.akaDamian isn't worried about Jason.The others? Sure. But Damian's not worried. He's checking in purely because he knows how much of an idiot Jason is.Also, it's the holidays.
Series: Alone (Together) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083293
Comments: 6
Kudos: 176





	It Feels Like Christmas (Sort of)

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to. Merry Christmas!  
> This little piece is set before 'Waitin' on the World to Change'. I might add some more here, later. But I just thought I'd put this out here in time for Christmas.  
> I love both of these boys to death and I hope you enjoy!  
> TW: anxiety and Jason panicking a lil 
> 
> Enjoy and happy holidays!

It all started with the demon-brat. 

_ Figures.  _

A fist connected with Jason’s apartment door, and from where he was sprawled on his couch, he groaned, tried to keep his temper in check. It’d been way too out of hand lately. He was sane enough to realize that today. 

Today. 

He wasn’t sure how sane he’d be tomorrow. It’d seemed to vary from day to day. 

Another knock at the door. 

Jason threw an arm over his eyes, tried to breathe evenly. There was no reason to be getting worked up over something like that. Over someone knocking on his door. But he could feel the sticky, polluted feeling for the Lazarus Pit leaping up in his chest. 

_ Breathe, Jason,  _ he tried to remind himself.  _ Breathe.  _

He gritted his teeth and felt the next knock in his own head. It rang behind his eyes, irritated something in his head that made him  _ want to scream. _ Maybe he would. Maybe he would let the green just take over and he’d just slam the door open and—

“Todd! I know you’re in there,” 

Jason froze, heart leaping into his throat.  _ What?  _

“Todd. Open the door.” 

Jason knew that voice. He  _ knew  _ that voice because he’d fought that voice. Tried to kill that voice. 

Er, the owner of that voice, anyway. 

Damian Wayne. 

_ Crap.  _

There was a pause and Jason tried to convince himself that it was stupid to get nervous because one of Bats knew where he lived. It wasn’t as though they were going to attack him. It wasn’t as though they were going to try and lock him away again. It wasn’t as though they were going to try and kill him. 

They didn’t murder. He did.

The brat yelled Jason’s name again and he realized belatedly that his butt was still glued to his couch. His arm was still pressed over his eyes, he was still trying to convince himself to breathe and not panic and  _ not murder someone  _ like a freaking psycho. 

“Todd, open the door!” 

Jason lurched to his feet before he could overthink it again. The kid was already here. Jason was trying to be sane again. Sane people had conversations with other (sort of) sane people. It wasn’t Bru—]it wasn’t  _ him.  _ It was just the brat. Maybe he was injured. Maybe he was just—

Well, he didn’t  _ freaking know  _ but he didn’t feel like cowering, either. 

He was halfway to the door, two strides away, when he realized that he had a gun clutched in one hand and knife in the other and he was still seeing green in the edges of his vision. 

He dropped the gun like it was burning; his heart was thudding in his throat again. 

_ Breathe, Jason. You didn’t  _ do  _ anything yet.  _

Yet. 

He had killed someone by accident before. More than once. The odd thief or drug dealer that had said the wrong thing and suddenly Jason had blood on his hands and he couldn’t quite recognize the mangled body. 

The sudden, unbidden image of  _ Damain’s  _ mangled body made Jason start. His chest hiccuped a little. 

_ Breathe, Jason.  _

“Todd, I can hear you! I insist you open the door this—” 

Jason flipped the lock and yanked the door open, and the demon brat nearly tumbled inside. 

Damian corrected almost immediately with a grace that was characteristic of him. But the shocked look on his face was nearly as satisfying as seeing him fall on his butt. Jason felt the shock of a bubble of laughter clear a little of the misty green in his vision. 

“Todd?” 

“What’d you expect?” Jason said, stepping away from the kid. “What are you—Is that  _ pizza _ ?” 

Damian flushed immediately, but his expression had morphed back into the stony exterior that Jason was more familiar with. “No.” He snapped, sarcasm like venom in his tone. “It’s a souffle. Can I come in?” 

Jason didn’t even get a word out before the brat was pushing his way past and moving into the living room. He turned a slow circle, balancing the pizza box carefully in his hands. He faced Jason again, a moment later, his nose turned up. 

“You live here?” 

“You gotta problem?” Jason asked, harshly. He was beginning to remember why exactly he didn’t enjoy this kid’s company. 

No, who was he kidding? He hated  _ all  _ the Bats. 

“You know where the door is.” Jason gestured backward with the hand holding the knife. 

The Demon ignored that, dropping the pizza down on Jason’s bloodstained—because not all patrols are easy or clean—couch. He hesitated again, glancing up at Jason, and then dropping onto the couch next to the pizza box. 

Jason blinked at him. “What are you doing?” 

Damian stared at him, hard, for a long minute. The way he did that made Jason’s skin crawl despite the Pit’s chanting in the back of his mind ( _ you could kill him, you would slit his throat, you could kill him).  _

Damian’s gaze drifted to the knife in Jason’s hands, then to the floor—probably to the gun that Jason had dropped. 

Then he turned, tugged open the pizza box, and gestured to the inside. “Grayson said you would like pepperoni.” 

Jason didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how to react to any of this because  _ Batman’s son  _ had just pushed his way into Jason’s apartment and offered him pepperoni pizza, at the Golden Boy’s suggestion. 

“What the—” 

“Are you entirely incapable of forming sentences consisting of words other than expletives and elementary school spelling-list words?” Damian wasn’t even committed to the gibe, just said it off-handedly, not even looking at Jason as he withdrew a slice of pizza. 

“You know it’s three in the morning, right?” 

Damian nodded. “And I know that you have not eaten,” 

“Wha—” 

“Alfred said you had terrible eating habits.” Damian wasn’t looking at him and Jason couldn’t quite tell if he was blushing again or if that was just his imagination. “And Dick said that you had a cold.” 

“How the—” 

“You have never sneezed at an acceptable volume in your life,” Damian said, then paused. Now he was definitely flushed. “Even I know that.” 

“So, you brought pizza,” Jason felt sort of numb. He wasn’t sure he wanted to pick up the kid by the scruff and chuck him back into the winter night— _ morning _ —where he belonged or just sit down and eat the food and  _ then  _ throw him out. 

He couldn’t lie to himself—he  _ was hungry.  _ He wasn’t really sick. He wasn’t sure he could be sick really, but he hadn’t been feeling exactly  _ right  _ either and he hadn’t had an appetite for anything in the last few days. 

Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he’d forgotten to eat and  _ then  _ started to feel like crap. He supposed that it would make sense either way. 

And Dick hadn’t been wrong. Pepperoni was his favorite. Or at least it had been. Before he died. He wasn’t sure if it still was. 

“Also, it is the holidays,” Damian mumbled the last part and Jason looked back up at him. 

“What?” 

“The holidays,” Damian repeated. He still hadn’t actually eaten on the slice of pizza in his hand and he looked down at it and then up at Jason. “Alfred thought you shouldn’t be entirely alone.” 

That phrase nearly short-circuited his brain. 

He  _ missed  _ Alfred. __

Jason couldn’t really tell if he was breathing, because the next second he was sitting down on the couch and his hands were numb and something in his chest was aching. 

“Tt,” Damian was watching him and Jason felt the back of his neck tingled. 

_ He hadn’t freaked out, had he? Nothing happened, right? Not in front of a Bat.  _

Jason could already imagine it, every scenario racing through his head. This was all it would take. All it would take for the Bats to realize that he really was unstable. That he really was crazy. That he really was losing it. And the next thing he would know, he’d be in prison. 

No, in Arkham Asylum. 

_ Again.  _

He needed to— _ Breathe, Jason _ —

He needed to do something. He needed to—

That image came again. The one of Damian, dead. Dead at  _ his  _ hands. 

But Jason didn’t care about that. He didn’t care if one of the Bats died. He didn’t care that Batman's own blood son died. He didn’t care if the kid died at his hand. He could kill the brat. He would kill the brat. He just needed to—

Green, snaking into his vision. 

_ Breathe, Jason.  _

Jason tried to keep his expression steady, pretending that he was just studying the pizza, studying Damian and not going through his own personal, and possibly Lazarus Pit aided, existential crisis. 

He didn’t care if he killed the kid—

The image again. 

_ Breathe, Jason.  _ He wasn’t sure if he was breathing as deeply as he should have been. He wasn’t sure if Damian was talking to him, what he was saying until, suddenly, he was: 

“Todd, you are an idiot,” Damian said. 

Jason’s head snapped up, meeting the brat’s eyes. He felt something flare in his chest: a poisonous mix of fear and anger. 

“ _ What? _ ” 

Damian didn’t flinch. He cocked his head, sticking his nose up in the air. “You are an idiot if you think you could kill me.” 

“What?” The word felt heavy in Jason’s mouth. 

“You could not kill me. Or any of us.” Damian said. “We would not allow it to happen. I believe that  _ you  _ would not allow it to happen.” The boy paused, swallowed and Jason found himself lacking words. “You would not be endangering anyone if you...were not alone for the holidays.” 

Something  _ tightened  _ in Jason’s chest. His mouth felt dry. 

“Oh?” 

“You died, Todd,” Damian wasn’t looking at Jason, seemingly distracted by his pizza again. “Alfred said that does not mean that you forfeited your family.” 

Jason slammed his eyes shut, feeling his breathing speed up. Damian didn’t seem to notice. Jason felt the boy shift on the couch and then get to his feet. He stood in front of Jason while he tried to learn how to think, how to breathe again. 

“Eat the pizza, Todd,” Damian said, after a minute ( _ an hour, a millennia) _ . “It would be unfortunate if you died again, simply because you were too thick-skulled to care for yourself properly. Merry Christmas.” 

Damian let himself out of Jason’s apartment. 

Jason didn’t open his eyes until the boy was long gone and he was sure that he was breathing again. 

The only sign leftover from the demon spawn was a box of pizza, a missing slice, and the hole that had been chipped in Jason’s undead heart. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Drinks lots of water and stay healthy this season!  
> -a


End file.
